Except that I'm 2 days late. Listen, this is my hobby, my real job is running 2 businesses, swimming lessons on the side, and attempting to raise 3 white boys to be good human beings when the entire world is telling them to be entitled shits. Nina Pool has no MUNEY, I have no TIME.

So what did you miss due to my untimeliness? Let me try to be QUICKABOUTIT

Your Behavior Will Be Monitored by Justin Feinstein (Tachyon Publications) — A near-future satire asking what happens when AI gets just a little bit smarter and the people profiting from it remove the guardrails. Or...is that the future at all? Sounds like now. Epistolary structure (had to look this one up, it's formatted in a series of emails, data readouts, chats, transcripts etc.) Tachyon is indie and this is very timely in this day and age of tech bros and their accountability-free playground otherwise known as Silicon Valley.

Pixerina by Joanne Anderton (Bad Hand Books) — More horror than sci-fi but I don't decide the genre, if it's listed as scifi or if I just feel like it it's here. A ghost story about an artist who is obsessed with a house haunted by a little girl, only it's about writer's block for artists, and the little girl just wants a friend, but the artist wants a muse. Is that actually called artist block? Creative block? Listen, I just paint shitty pictures of my dogs, I don't know. What I DO KNOW is that Bad Hand is a small Australian indie press, gets zero marketing budget and is maximum deserving of your attention. I mean, LOOK AT THAT COVER!

The Blood Year Daughter by G.G. Silverman (Creature) — This is actually a horror short story collection. Silverman described it as "a response to my experience of being female, being the daughter of immigrants, and being disabled." Stories include a woman builds husbands out of gravel and slaughterhouse feathers, two sisters eat cinnamon-scented pieces of their mother, and a charming doctor’s murdered brides whisper warnings to his newest wife. I've seen someone describle it as "a rallying cry against the patriarchy." So no, it's again not really scifi, but it looks hella cool.

Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer (Penguin Random House/DAW) — 40 years after the world almost ended, a worn-out robot in the abandoned New York Botanical Gardens gets attacked and realizes old evils are stirring. I don't really know what that means but that's the blurb. Palmer has been featured in Clarkesworld multiple times and I'll read just about anything about robots. Hope-punk, themes of loneliness and purpose, comped to Becky Chambers' Monk & Robot, which if you haven't read is one of the most complete novelettes EVER. Seriously, how can she change your life in so few pages? Features a very good cyborg dog, which is obviously the most important detail.

The Radiant Dark by Alexandra Oliva (PRH) — Follows a family across fifty years after a first-contact event in Michigan connects their minds. It says Arrival meets Wild Dark Shore, neither of which I've heard of so there's that. Described as a "bold exploration of what it means to be human." Literary sci-fi, standalone. NGL, this cover sucks. Like who is making these decisions?

That old addage "don't judge a book by it's cover" is completely disregarding some pretty major tenets of human psychology. I don't know of a single reader who doesn't browse a bookstore based on covers (well, except maybe that guy who rips books in half to make them easier to carry in his pocket, who KNOWS what's going in in his brain.) Covers are SO IMPORTANT, especially to a newer author. Do better PRH!

A River From the Sky by Ai Jiang (Titan Books) Now THAT is a cover. I hope in person it's got embossing because that would be sexy. Science-fantasy novella sequel to A Palace Near the Wind. Which I haven't read, sorry, I wish I could read them all! Sisters Lufeng and Sangshu fight to protect their culture and their world. For readers of Nghi Vo and Amal El-Mohtar, WHICH I AM.

We Burned So Bright by TJ Klune (Macmillan/Tor) — Elder gay couple, 40 years together, rogue black hole incoming. They have one month and one last road trip to take care of unfinished business before Earth is gone. 176 pages. Remember that Klune pulled some problematic Stephenie Meyer shit with The House in the Cerulean Sea (If you missed it he used for inspiration the Canadian government's practice of abducting Indigenous children and placing them in residential schools for forced assimilation, made no public advocacy for First Nations communities, never addressed the backlash from Indigenous readers, and then wrote a sequel anyway.) So do with that info what you will. I know what I will do with it, and that's read an author who takes some fucking accountability. He doesn't get a snippet of his cover because I am petty.

WOW. I was not in any way QUICKABOUTIT. I make no apologies for rambling. I yam who I yam.

See you next week. I'll definitely be here, at my house, because with gas prices i can't afford to go anywhere.

— Zee

If you liked this and want more of whatever THIS is (unhinged book analysis, barely contained rage at the state of the world, and occasional Tamsyn Muir references and em dashes that I will never apologize for) consider subscribing for $5/month. Every cent goes to people who actually need it, because I have a day job and a cause, not a brand deal. This is my middle finger to Big 5 publishing, dressed up as a book blog. Come hold it up with me.